Warhammer Online delayed

Warhammer Online will not appear in the shops until sometime between April and June next year, a few months later than its previous Q1 2008 date.

EA Mythic declared in an open letter to its fans that it had extended its development simply because it will not rush the game to release.

"When we looked at our options, two paths lay before us: 1) Ship the game on time with fewer features and less polish, or 2) Extend the development cycle and spend the needed time and money to make WAR great," said Mark Jacobs, EA Mythic boss, in a statement.

"We chose the latter path - to invest additional time and effort in implementation and polish to make WAR great."

Jacobs also wanted to reassure us that the fuss made over recent lay-offs within the company was nothing to be alarmed about. It was all perfectly normal developer behaviour, and the small number culled will have no impact on the release schedule at all.

Early last month EA Mythic closed its beta servers so that it could take all of your feedback, make lots of changes, and then give you lots of new bits and pieces to test.

These will be new careers to progress through, fresh cities to siege and explore, as well as more community options to manage your guilds and keep in contact with your friends.

Jacobs and team will also be polishing up its star attraction, Realm versus Realm combat - like Player versus Player combat only on a much bigger scale. Show off.

Changes here will be made to the Server Rule Set, hopefully pushing everything closer to the open field and enormous battles promised since conception - something you will be able to choose to take part in or not.

Bertie is a senior staff writer, which doesn't mean he's old, although he is, a bit. He's part of the furniture here and reports on all kinds of things, the stranger the better. He's a bit odd but then who isn't? @Clert on Twitter.